Abstract
Governments are kidnapping journalists and their families to stop them reporting on stories they don’t want covered,
CREDIT: Taylor Callery/Ikon
Etukuri was surrounded by men in military uniform as he got into his car. He was handcuffed, taken to an undisclosed location and held for six days. He told Index he was tortured and that he feared for his life. While in custody, his captors demanded that he reveal the sources behind the story, but he refused. They let him go only after they had gone through all his private emails.
Today he still doesn’t feel safe, saying he is being trailed and that his phone is being tapped. He communicated with Index over the encrypted WhatsApp service.
“There are usually procedures to be followed when summoning journalists… We are now being intimidated,” he said.
Etukuri believes the problem lies with a few government officials in the security department. “It’s saddening that the president, who fought for the establishing rule of law, is silent.”
Etukuri is the second high-profile journalist to have been kidnapped in Uganda in the past six months. Freelance journalist Isaac Bakka disappeared in October last year, and it was only this February that news of Bakka’s imprisonment emerged, following months of inquiries from his immediate family. He is charged with high treason.
The kidnapping of journalists is not unique to Uganda. Across the world we are seeing journalists and writers who dare to criticise those in power disappear.
Index spoke to Aasim Saeed, a blogger from Pakistan who now lives in the UK. Saeed was kidnapped and held in captivity for 21 days last year, suffering emotional and physical abuse. He joins a cohort of abducted journalists and dissidents in Pakistan.
According to the Human Rights Commission of Pakistan, since 2011 there have been more than 3,500 such disappearances. Saeed said his kidnapping departed from the past pattern in his area of Punjab because it was carried out by state forces rather than extremists.
“Previously if you were a journalist you would be beaten on the road or you would be threatened to keep you silent. Abduction is an extreme thing they’ve started doing,” said Saeed.
In some cases, when it’s not possible to target the journalists directly, close family members are kidnapped instead.
This tactic can be seen in the example of Chinese-American journalist Chen Xiaoping, whose wife was kidnapped in China last September. In January, a video of her emerged, in which she said she cut off all contact with Chen due to “emotional issues” and his “overseas work”.
“It’s clear that my wife’s kidnapping and my work have been totally related,” Chen said in response. His crime? Writing about corruption in the upper echelons of the Chinese Communist Party.
The message is loud and clear: governments don’t just want to punish those who bad-mouth them, they want to scare people so much they won’t pick up pen and paper.
It’s a tactic the team at Radio Free Asia know all too well. Four staff members who report from Washington on China’s draconian presence in Xinjiang have seen their close relatives detained. Three of RFA journalist Shohret Hoshur’s brothers have been arrested. One still remains in prison.
Both Etukuri and Saeed fear for their families, too.
“Before I was freed, my family received messages threatening their lives. Since I’ve left, my parents are still visited,” said Saeed. His parents have asked him to keep a low profile, for their safety as much as his. “I’m still writing, but in a subtle, not very blunt way,” he added.
Etukuri said his home has been attacked and his family harassed.
“My dogs chased them away, but the next day they broke into my car,” he said.
Adding fuel to the fire is technology. Advances in tracking phones and computers, alongside the global and undeletable nature of the internet, mean it’s increasingly easy to trace the movements of journalists and their families. These sophisticated detection tools are combining with the more familiar, cruder methods of silencing people – and the results are toxic.
“They have gone as far as basically saying ‘We know where you live. We have your telephone numbers. We know where your children go to school. We know who and where your family is’,” said Melinda Quintos de Jesus, a veteran Filipino journalist, in an interview with Vice magazine.
“You know that you have been watched – not just by ordinary people who hate you but [by] people who have the power to investigate and to track you, and to know where you are,” she said.
This toxic combination also means no one is immune, and the days when journalists could seek sanctuary elsewhere appear to be coming to an end. Big Brother is borderless, and regimes successfully portray themselves as omnipresent, with the ability to spy – and seize people – anywhere in the world.
Guo Wengui, the Chinese businessman interviewed by Chen who incriminated the Communist Party, said he was pursued by Chinese security officers in New York. Afghan Mukhtarli, a journalist living in Tbilisi, Georgia, was kidnapped there last year and resurfaced in his home country, Azerbaijian. He was investigating the assets of the Azerbaijan president’s family in Georgia, according to a Facebook post by a colleague.
Some of those who are kidnapped are released, others are not. The body of disappeared Honduran journalist Ángel Alfredo Villatoro Rivera was found last May. His murder occurred a week after another kidnapped Honduran journalist, Erick Martinez Ávila, was also found dead. Then there is the list of journalists who aren’t even kidnapped, just killed outright, such as Slovakian journalist Jan Kuciak, who was shot dead alongside his girlfriend in his apartment at the end of February.
And for those who survive, the trauma does not end upon release. Speaking to Yemeni journalist, cameraman and filmmaker Abdulaziz Muhammad al-Sabri, he explained that he continues to be affected “psychologically and negatively to this day” and has “had difficulties recovering from it”.
Al-Sabri was kidnapped twice, in one instance being held in chains for 15 days. His laptop and camera were also destroyed.
He said he can’t go back to work, in part because of the trauma and in part because he no longer has equipment.
The fear that incidents such as these instil in those still living and working in areas where kidnappings occur is evident and, as al-Sabri’s example shows, it is driving people away from working for the media.
One journalist from China, who wished to remain anonymous, said he had recently left the industry and did not expect to return anytime soon. When asked why, he responded bluntly. “What’s the point?”